Europe defends 'stupid' Galileo satellite

January 18, 2011
by Yann Ollivier

A computer-generated image shows three satellites, part of the European Galileo navigation system network, in 2002. Europe stood by its much-delayed and over-budget Galileo satellite navigation system on Tuesday despite a rising price tag and a contractor's description of the project as "stupid."

Europe stood by its much-delayed and over-budget Galileo satellite navigation system on Tuesday despite a rising price tag and a contractor's description of the project as "stupid."

Previously estimated to cost 3.4 billion euros, the European Commission said an extra 1.9 billion euros was needed to complete the constellation of satellites, raising its price tag to 5.4 billion euros ($7.2 billion).

Aimed at rivaling the US-built Global Positioning System (GPS) and Chinese and Russian projects, the system needs more cash due to the higher costs of the development phase and satellite launchers, the commission said.

"We need to bear in mind that Russia is engaged in deploying its global system and China is continuing to increase its own systems too. Japan and India are also entering the scene," Tajani said.

"That means Europeans cannot lag behind," he told a news conference at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.

Galileo is scheduled to go online in 2014 -- six years later than originally planned -- with an initial constellation of 18 satellites. The first two satellites will be launched in the third quarter of this year.

But the commission said in a policy paper that 3.4 billion euros was "not enough to complete the infrastructure."

An extra 1.9 billion euros is needed to launch the remaining 12 satellites by 2020 and offer the full services promised by the project.

In addition, the commission said the operating costs for Galileo and a sister system called EGNOS will amount to 800 million euros a year.

Europe wants to end its dependence on the US GPS system in a market the commission said would grow from 130 billion euros in 2010 to 240 billion euros in 2020.

"The Galileo project is going ahead, the commission has decided on this," Tajani said.

"It will improve the lives of citizens in sectors such as transport, agriculture, energy and combatting illegal immigration," he added.

A row erupted over the system after the whistleblower website WikiLeaks published a US diplomatic cable quoting scathing criticism from the head of German firm OHB Technology, which was awarded a 566-million-euro to develop 14 Galileo satellites.

According to an October 2009 cable from the US embassy in Berlin, OHB Technology chief Berry Smutny said: "I think Galileo is a stupid idea that primarily serves French interests."

He went on to say that Galileo was "a waste of EU taxpayers' money championed by French interests," according to the cable.

The company announced Tuesday that it had suspended Smutny, who has denied making the comments.

Tajani dismissed the WikiLeaks report, saying he had met Smutny before the leak and that he had stated that he believed in Galileo. The company has since committed "wholeheartdly to delivering the Galileo system," Tajani said.

Europe's Galileo satellite navigation system, meant to rival the US-built Global Positioning System (GPS), is over budget, running late and will be unprofitable for years, a press report said on Thursday.

The constellation of Virgo (The Virgin) is especially rich in galaxies, due in part to the presence of a massive and gravitationally-bound collection of over 1300 galaxies called the Virgo Cluster. One particular member of ...

(Phys.org)—A small team of researchers from the U.S. and Italy has found evidence of a naturally formed quasicrystal in a sample obtained from the Khatyrka meteorite. In their paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, ...

As a cosmic dust magnet, Saturn's C ring gives away its youth. Once thought formed in an older, primordial era, the ring may be but a mere babe – less than 100 million years old, according to Cornell-led astronomers in ...

6 comments

Seems to me this is one case where a unified effort by all concerned countries should have been undertaken so that a single integrated system would be deployed. What will happen, instead, is the deployment of a gaggle of competing systems, all incompatible with each other. That, IMO, is the "stupid" component of not only the Galileo system, but all of the separate systems, including the US GPS, because of rampant duplication of effort and the accompanying wastage of vast amounts of money. This, in economic conditions where saving these vast sums of money would be extremely beneficial to all countries concerned! Go figure!!

Redundancy is not necessarily stupid. What if the only GPS system in the world belonged to China? Would you feel comfortable? Redundancy is also a good way to make add robustness to a system.That said, when the contractor building the system says outright that it is a stupid idea, something clearly isn't right.